His Other Wife: A Novel — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SLEEPING BEAUTY. 13 to their elegant home in Florida. But under no circum- stances would Mr. Warren have been socially acquainted with persons so far removed from his own humble rank. By sheer force of genius and manhood the young lawyer had emerged from obscure poverty at that period in Southern life when even affluence could not atone for the disgrace of being a tradesman or a plebeian. He had not yet worn the professional dignity sufficiently long to win him admittance into the patrician circles, even had he been properly desirous of that distinction. But, unhappily for his future prospects, he had tenaciously clung to a vulgar contempt for the condescensions of the upper classes. He came of a cold-blooded race of inde- pendent artisans, who asked nothing better of the world than a chance to win their own bread, and eat it as they chose. Such had been Gordon Warren’s success at the bar that, with a little enterprise, he might easily have procured the recognition of society, with whom a laurel wreath would be accepted as ample apology for a very conspicuous pair of horns. But the steady acquisition of popular favor and patronage seemed to fill the measure of his ambition; and though all the world spoke of his eloquence and talent, he made no effort to use them as levers to. social preferment. _. One pair of eyes only watched, with fond and loving tenderness, the gathering sunrays about the quiet, sober brow of the young attorney. They were old eyes, and faded by many tears, but their welcome seemed all suffi- Eomicbooks.co im